The Cougar Lady

Legendary Trapper of Sechelt Inlet

Every town has its celebrities, but Sechelt’s own unique and larger-than-life personality is wholesome enough to satisfy all of North America’s appetite for eccentrics. Asta Bergliot Solberg, or “Bergie,” as her friends knew her, lived life on her own terms. She climbed wild mountain trails to hunt for goats, demanded car rides from unsuspecting locals, spent a night in the woods wrapped in the skin of a bear she’d shot and thought nothing of rowing twenty-five miles down a dark, windy inlet. With equal ferocity she wrangled cougars, conservation officers and the police, who arrested her for packing a rifle in town.

In this much-anticipated memoir, Rosella Leslie pieces together Bergie’s life story through a collection of interviews, local stories and personal anecdotes.The Cougar Lady: Legendary Trapper of Sechelt Inlet follows Bergie’s life journey, one lived with ferocity and insurmountable fearlessness. Asta Solberg is a true icon of the Sunshine Coast, embodying the irreplaceable and unmistakable vibrancy of Sechelt itself.